I am a little surprised by the presumption that many seem to have here about unlimited First Amendment rights on government property. I don’t think I have the right to walk into any government building and say whatever I want at any time I choose. Most public universities have their own charters and codes. UVA has always had an Honor Code, which holds students to standards of conduct beyond those enshrined in law elsewhere. I don’t know much about OU, but I’ve inferred that Greek societies play a dominant role in campus social life, and they provide a vital network for the students’ future careers. I don’t think African-American students would feel physically threatened by frat-bros chanting as much as they feel that their opportunities to engage with and benefit from their college are hampered by their inability to pledge at a number of societies. We would love to believe that their absence from most traditionally white organizations is by choice, but the crowd on that bus demonstrated that de facto segregation not only persists but does so brazenly. The boys on the bus were chanting this while dressed up and trying to impress girls. This was the face they chose to put on their fraternity, and they obviously did so because it was what they were shown themselves. Upperclassmen taught them the chant as part of the tradition. It also appears that this chant was resurrected fairly recently. That is what should disturb people most: flagrant, defiant racism is back, obviously encouraged within educated, prosperous sectors of society - not merely among the poor and ignorant.
Again with the strawman. No one here has said that First Amendment rights are “unlimited on government property.”
As stated by several lawyers on this thread, charters and codes cannot trump the constitution.
I doubt that it ever went away.
@Nrdsb4 - It seems that the OU chapter of SAE has pledged African-American members in the past (one of whom has granted numerous interviews), and some youngish alumni claim they never heard the chant. I heard a representative of the national chapter say that their investigations revealed that the chant - a relic from desegregation battles decades ago - only seems to have resurfaced in the past few years. Racism never went away, but I believe this is more evidence of increased polarization when a college freshman presumes he is in “safe” company for expressing such antediluvian ideas, and that all his companions share his sentiments.
660 That is what I wondered about earlier in this thread. How are free speech rights impacted by college honor codes or the college's requirement for non-discrimination? From a purely free speech perspective, the frat boys had the right to sing this song on their bus. But most agree the college was well within its rights to shut down the fraternity. I would assume, however, that the government could not shut down a private company if the something similar happened on a bus full of corporate folks on their way to an event. If discrimination in hiring could be proved, the company could be fined or the claimant win a judgement, but the company would not be closed for the incident.
As Hunt has said, each incident has to be evaluated on its own.
Racism is not gone. We are not in a post-racial society. There has certainly been a lot of progress and the uproar and disgust over this incident is certainly evidence of that.
They certainly could do so, but if I understand correctly, it was the fraternity’s national body which pulled their charter.
Actually, no a public Uni cannot ‘shut down’ the fraternity since technically, it IS a private entity (unless the Uni owns the frat house-land/building). However, the college can disassociate itself from the Frat by banning it from membership in the official Greek housing list and any college financial support.
This is a Greek website, and this piece defies …well. For those who don’t want to read, the thesis is that fraternities are being harassed and threatened and we are worried about Greek safety now that they’ve been unfairly painted as racists. (They can’t be racists! It was just a harmless tradition! They can’t be racists! They raised money for charity!) They are victims in all this. Wow.
Consolation, Great! Let’s talk then instead of kicking kids out for merely expressing their opinion.
On another note, I saw a few posts asking what is more important, the feelings of a particular group or freedom of speech. Unfortunately, as much as we should all care for each other’s feelings, freedom of speech trumps all. Now physical or material harm is a different matter, of course. There is clear case law that shows the parameters within which public universities must operate and in this case Boren went outside those parameters.
So the university will suffer.
There’s an odd quality to these discussions that has been bothering me:
Everyone in this debate explicitly or implicitly treats the SAE boys as if they actually meant what they were singing – that lynching Black men is a normal and appropriate part of life, that excluding Black men is critical to the identity of their fraternity, that it’s fine to use insulting racial epithets. The Cardinal Fang (and many others, I am just remembering her name and positions and don’t feel like checking) wing takes that position in order to support the idea that this activity actually created a hostile environment or a more concrete threat to African-Americans at Oklahoma University. The First Amendment Hunt club treats the boys as if they were expressing a fringe political viewpoint that deserves First Amendment protection.
In fact – and I think all of us, and pretty much everyone at OU, understands this instinctively – it’s completely unlikely that the boys meant any of it. They were getting a big kick out of being bad, politically incorrect; they were showing how much contempt they had for social conventions. They weren’t proposing to lynch anybody, and they probably weren’t even serious about keeping anyone out of their fraternity. (Exclusion, I’m sure, was a big part of the fraternity’s identity, but not exclusion on the basis of race.) That doesn’t absolve them of racism, or white privilege, at all – they virtually embody white privilege – but it’s bizarre to talk as though they were Aryan Nation as opposed to a bunch of giggly boys saying bad words and probably not even fully understanding what the lynching reference meant.
I’m not certain what that does to my legal analysis. At some level, it undermines the First Amendment concerns, because the First Amendment ultimately protects the expression of ideas, not the expression of snottiness and immaturity. But it also undermines the need to act quickly and decisively to cut off race hatred root and branch.
@greenbutton can you show me where in that article it defends that chant as a “harmless tradition”? I got a whole different take on that article. My take on reading that article is because of the very racist words of a few, many are being physically threatened and property vandalized and all Greeks are being treated as racists.
If what I’ve read elsewhere is true, that Greeks (not even SAE members) have been “jumped” and tires on cars with Greek letters have been slashed, and property has been vandalized, I could see how the author feels that all Greeks at OU are being seen as racists until proven other wise.
Would it concern you if a member of an unrelated fraternity or sorority who had nothing to do with the chant was attacked or had property damaged because of this? That sort of seems like victimization to me.
I thought the First Amendment protected expression of all ideas including snotty and immature ones. Evidently I missed the memo that if an idea is objectively determined to be snotty and immature, it loses it’s First Ammendment protections.
The fact that this particular frat at OU has virtually nobody but white boys as members undermines the point that they do not discriminate by race. Clearly, they do discriminate either intentionally (no men of color allowed) or subconsciously in their rush policy and who they select. The fact that nobody on the bus or in the frat thought this song was a bad idea shows the racial bias runs pretty deep. I agree that the hostile environment argument is hard to make based on singing on the bus.
The need to act swiftly was to show that this sort of thinking is not supported by the overall SAE national or the college. Not sure what you mean by your last sentence.
“But most agree the college was well within its rights to shut down the fraternity.”
Again, this isn’t what happened here. SAE national pulled the charter within a few hours of hearing about the incident. Consequently, there IS no SAE fraternity any more for OU to recognize or not-recognize. It’s just a bunch of guys, who just happen to have a lot of t-shirts with the Greek letters sigma, alpha and epsilon on them.
Do we know that there are no non-white members of OU SAE? Just asking because I haven’t seen that in print anywhere.
“The fact that this particular frat at OU has virtually nobody but white boys as members undermines the point that they do not discriminate by race. Clearly, they do discriminate either intentionally (no men of color allowed) or subconsciously in their rush policy and who they select.”
Or, young black men at OU are primarily interested in the black fraternities and don’t bother to show up to rush parties.
I wish people would please distinguish between “I’m happy to consider anyone who shows up at my door, but not a lot of black people show up” versus “When a black guy shows up, I go out of my way to make him feel unwelcome.”
“the First Amendment ultimately protects the expression of ideas, not the expression of snottiness and immaturity.”
I largely agree with your theory that these guys, at least consciously, were excited about saying something forbidden and never gave any real thought to the weight of their words. But I don’t think I agree that that affects the FA analysis. Basically, you’re arguing that this chant was an obscenity, a bleat without political or literary substance. It’s the money shot of racial debate, only intended to titillate. If so, it’s still protected, right?
^^ Do we even know if any non-whites even applied (pledged?) to SAE at OU?
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg05_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=748 says that 23% of men at OU participate in fraternities, and 30% of women at OU participate in sororities.
“I thought the First Amendment protected expression of all ideas including snotty and immature ones. Evidently I missed the memo that if an idea is objectively determined to be snotty and immature, it loses it’s First Ammendment protections.”
That’s right. Pretty much any message is protected.
You can regulate time place and manner for safety and similar concerns.
You can also have certain very limited types of unprotected speech – fighting words, falsely shouting fire in a theater, etc. Those exceptions have to be based on something else besides the yuckiness of the content.
I’d agree that these guys are naughty d-bags rather than dedicated white supremicists with plans to inflict physical violence on AAs. Which leads to my conclusion that there really wasn’t any imminent threat, danger or meaningful hostile environment. So they probably have 1st amendment protection. And expelling the two guys was an aggressive interpretation of the law, but not totally groundless.
There’s non first amendment ways/means to hammer the frat. Get the national organization to do it. Terminate the house lease if OU owns the house. Withdraw university recognition and support of the organization, etc. The expulsion seems to be the most legally questionable piece.